How To Reduce Your Business IT And Telecoms Bills

Many business owners are asking themselves right now how they can reduce business costs, their business IT and telecoms bill being just one of those considerations.  Here are some tips to consider when looking to reduce your business costs.

Business bundle discounts

A great business cost reduction method is to ask for bundle discounts.  For this you need a great SME supplier that can offer you a full product range.  Basically, it’s cheaper for your supplier to look after one customer with five products than five customers with one product.  A great starting point is to get out all of your business phone bills, phone system bills, broadband bill, business mobile phone bill, and all your IT bills including any monthly costs paid for support, cyber security or Microsoft.

If you are using various suppliers, now is the time to look into consolidating these with one supplier to reduce your business costs.  Decide which of these suppliers is the best and gives you great service, then ask them if they can supply all of your business telecom and business IT services in one consolidated offering.  By giving them the opportunity to supply all these services to you on one bill, in return they should be able to give you some discounts.

If your current supplier cannot offer you all of these services, then it’s probably time to find one that can.  After all, these services should all work together to ensure your business not only saves money, but also gives you additional savings from a more efficient unified solution.  Mobiles, office phones, laptops, IT applications should all be working together to give your business a resilient and flexible working environment.  So, by bundling your services together with one supplier you should get cost savings for your business, improve efficiency and save time, plus have the additional comfort that if anything ever has a fault, you are not scrabbling around trying to find out who to call to fix it.

 

How much do you value customer service?

You have to decide how important customer service is to your business.  If you ever changed energy supplier you probably won’t have seen any difference in service, as you are used to poor customer service from the big energy firms! However, IT and telecoms are different. Most businesses simply cannot function if there’s a fault, if their customers cannot reach them or if they don’t reply to customers swiftly.

There is no point moving from a trusted existing supplier to a new one in order to save, say, £50 a month on your bill if your new supplier takes two days to fix any faults.  How much is your time per hour worth?  How much will your business lose if your customers can’t contact you and you miss a sale that could be worth hundreds or even thousands of pounds?

If you are happy with your current provider, speak to them first. There may be some way to mitigate price increases or discount your bills with them by bundling all your services together.  Finding a reliable, responsive supplier that knows your business and values your custom is hard.  So why move to a big corporate supplier where you are just an account number to them, or a supplier that sells really cheap but has terrible service when you really need them?

Downtime can be costly, so if your current provider resolves any issues you have swiftly and provides great service it’s probably better talking to them rather than jumping into the unknown and having to deal with call centres where nobody knows you or your company.  Cheaper is not always better!  Also changing to a completely new supplier may mean you unwittingly enter a long contract, so if the new service level is awful, you’re stuck.

 

Don’t pay for stuff you don’t need

Sounds simple right?  But how often do you check your bills and really understand them? Hopefully every month, but here’s why.  An easy way to save money in a business is to review all your bills to make sure you don’t pay for anything you don’t need.  Sometimes this can be hard to work out when it comes to business IT and telecom bills.  So, ask for help if you don’t understand them.

Some unscrupulous suppliers make their bills hard to understand on purpose.  When we review a potentially new customers’ current bills, we often find they are paying for things that they just don’t need anymore.  This is not usually because the existing supplier is intentionally charging them for services that are not required.  It is more that many businesses do not review what they are paying for on a regular basis and technology moves on meaning other cheaper solutions are now on the market.

A great example is SoGEA broadband for businesses.  This is a low-cost replacement for traditional business broadband connections that were delivered by copper cables (these old types of connections are being switched off by the way, so check yours now!). This type of broadband can be delivered without you having to pay for a phone line as well, so there is an immediate saving.  This is just one simple example, but when we analyse clients’ bills the reasons why businesses are paying for things they don’t need are varied, so there could be some easy wins to reduce your business telecoms bill and IT costs.

 

Say goodbye to call charges: Change an old business phone system to VoIP.

When you switch to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) cloud systems, you should get at least 5,000 minutes per user of free UK calls.

When you move to VoIP, you’ll also have the advantage of a scalable system that can give you more telephone lines as and when you need them.

You can also get cash back towards the upgrade from some suppliers as well.  Plus getting rid of your old phone system will save your electricity.

 

Move your business mobiles to a SIM only deal

With mobile contracts, you pay for the device over a number of months as depicted by your contract. The actual price you pay for the device will be much higher than the market value, allowing the contractor to profit or at least pay a decent interest rate. With a SIM-only deal, however, you can reduce your costs. Why pay for a device if your employees don’t really need one, only pay for the calls and services you use.  Plus it is better for the environment!

I hope this guide helps to reduce your business costs.  If you need any further information give us a call on 01892 577 577.